"Men We Reaped" (Jesmyn Ward); Baton Rouge, 1968

NOTE: I began “Be-Lied” as a medium for me to publish fiction and non-fiction pieces after the loss of another publishing platform. As it happens, I opened “Be-Lied” with a story-telling challenge. To date, no one has taken up that challenge. Therefore, I have decided to attach a story to each informational piece I publish on “Be-Lied.” Not all of those stories are “true.” The one attached to this review of "Men We Reaped" is true. I originally published this review on the Yahoo Contributors Network.

Men We Reaped: A Memoir

Jesmyn Ward

Bloomsbury 2013

I was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and had relatives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  I came of age in the 1960’s when the Civil Rights Movement was pushing the South, kicking and screaming, toward integration.  “Men We Reaped” is an emotionally difficult, insightful read.  It illuminates a world parallel to the one I grew up in, a world that was separate but NOT equal.

While this work is a memoir, it is not about Ward. It is about Black men in the South and various factors which shaped their lives, including endemic racism, economic hardship, and drug activity.  Specifically, Ward narrates the lives of five young Black men in her community who died within a five-year window between 2000 and 2004.  These five young Black men fell for various reasons, ranging from gun violence to drug activity to automobile accidents.

In narrating the lives of the five young Black men, of necessity she narrates the story of the larger community and of the women in that community.  Ward writes, “To tell [this story], I must tell the story of my town, and the history of my community.”  To this end, Ward employs a unique narrative structure, narrating the stories of the five young Black men in reverse chronological order.  She interweaves the story of her family in chronological order, alternating those chapters with chapters about the five young Black men.

In this unflinching account of a Black community on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Ward describes the life they led, but she never judges or editorializes.  She relates stories of Black men dealing drugs because they cannot get jobs with decent wages, so they deal to augment meager incomes.  She relates her father’s infidelities and multiple children out of wedlock.  She relates her mother’s struggle to save her marriage and later her struggle as a single mother to keep her family together.  Ward relates her own mixed feelings about her mother working as a housekeeper for wealthy White families on the Gulf Coast in order to insure that her children are fed and educated.  She relates times when extended families lived in cramped quarters, pooling resources of money, food, and child care.

I grew up in a working class White family.  While separate water fountains and laundromats were largely things of the past in my childhood, I still remember seeing the “White” and “Colored” signs.  Ward’s memoir is a somber testament to those she loved and to a time that is still too much with us.

My Story—The 1967-68 School Year, Baton Rouge
 

In the 1967-68 school year, I was in 6^th grade, my sister in 4^th grade, my brother in 2^nd grade, at Howell Park Elementary School in Baton Rouge. In an attempt to comply with Brown vs. Board of Education, Louisiana sprinkled African-American students among the various classes. In retrospect, I wonder how these students were chosen to be sprinkled, and how were they transported to and from our school. One lone student, “Peter,” joined my class.

In the 1967-68 school year, my maternal grandmother was in the final months of her lengthy battle with breast cancer. During one of her hospitalizations, my mother took us to visit. She pulled us aside in the corridor and admonished: “Do not tell your grandmother that you have black children in your classes. It would kill her.” The 11-year-old me could not quite figure out how this news would do in my grandmother; nonetheless, I took it to heart.

In the 1967-68 school year, “Ralphie” rocked the 6^th grade classes by uttering “shit” at the water fountain at the end of recess one day. “Mindy” became the first 6^th grade girl to really need a bra. At the end of March, 1968, my grandmother finally succumbed to her cancer. And “Peter” spent a year of his education in a big, white bubble.

Road Trip--My Story

Road Trips—In Literature

Literature offers a plethora of road trip stories such as the one Beowulf takes with his buds to save Geatland and earn honor. Homer’s “Odyssey” is the great-grandparent of all road trips. (If you haven’t read Margaret Atwood’s “Penelopiad” (“The Odyssey” from Penelope’s point-of-view), you should. No one yet has taken up my story-telling challenge, so I am offering up another story in the context of the previous blog posting, How to Read “Beowulf.”

Road Trips—My Story

Back in the waning days of undergraduate school at LSU in the late 1970’s, I shared an apartment in Baton Rouge with two roommates. Our “friendkind” consisted of a loosely-knit group—non-trad college students, fast food workers, day laborers--just trying to get by. Its composition ebbed and flowed, depending on the weather and the moon.

Late one Wednesday, my roommates and I were working on a project due soon when a party materialized at our door. They informed us that Buddy had recently met a chambermaid who worked at the Alamo Plaza in Biloxi. Her day off was Thursday. A road trip to Biloxi was happening tomorrow so Buddy could get to know his new acquaintance better. Departure time was late afternoon so those with classes or day work could put in their day. Return time was very early Friday morning so those with classes or day work could put in their day.

Thursday afternoon we made the two-plus hour drive to Biloxi. Buddy met up with his girl. The rest of us hung out on the beach, drinking beer, eating shrimp, lolling about. Buddy and his girl got one room to themselves. She could only swing one room for the rest of us. That night, as we sorted out who would sleep in beds, in chairs, on the floor, in the bathtub, we heard a thumping and whimpering from the room next door—and it wasn’t a radio playing the blues. We decided to go as a group to investigate.

A disheveled fellow answered our knock. “You got a party going on over here?” we asked.

Uncertainly the fellow replied, “Yeah, we having a party.”

“Well, we’re having a party, too,” someone piped up. “We should all party together.” As we pushed into the room, I recognized the whimperer as a girl I went to high school with, Thea. As we milled about their room, I discreetly asked, “Are you OK?”

“No, I’m not OK,” she said quietly.

We put a plan in motion. One of our group just happened to have some “pain killers,” which someone managed to administer to Thea’s male companion. It did not take long before he was feeling no pain. We agreed that the guys would sleep in their room, and the girls, with Thea, would sleep in ours. No one had to sleep in the bathtub, after all.

Friday morning, we headed out a little earlier than planned, taking Thea with us and the coil to their car. As we approached Slidell, we realized that we had forgotten Buddy at the Alamo Plaza.

“Buddy’ll find his way home,” someone shrugged.

In Baton Rouge, we dropped Thea at her parents’ house. Later, I called her mother, who told me that they had sent Thea to Arizona to stay with an aunt. It was the only time I have ever heard of a girl going to “stay with an aunt” when she was not unwed and pregnant. I never received news of Thea again.